


cœur de lion

by delhuillier



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Blatant symbolism, Gen, dead-father angst, wanton domesticity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 04:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15502071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delhuillier/pseuds/delhuillier
Summary: In Zenith, Seliph and Ares take a quiet moment to mourn over What Might Have Been.





	cœur de lion

As with any army, the Order’s soldiers dirty their clothes, be it dust kicked up from the road, be it stains from their own blood or that of their enemy soldiers, be it food tumbled from utensils wielded incautiously. As with any army, laundry becomes a necessity.

It is a duty for which Ares often volunteers, as strange as he knows that must seem to others. But the relative solitude it often allows him makes the work not so trying as assisting in the mess tent, where each and every person is eager to converse despite the fact their mind ought to be on what their hands are doing with this knife or that flint or that spit of meat. And that besides, he has experience in washing clothes—as a mercenary, he had had none of the amenities due aristocrats in a more peaceful time. He’d needed to do his own laundry, repair his own clothes, hone and oil the blade of Mystletainn himself by the light of a candle after battle.

There are some who might call washing clothes woman’s work, but they are (without exception, Ares finds) those who know little about the reality of living without an estate and a retinue of sycophantic servants; and the routine, in truth, relaxes him. It recalls the days of rest after arduous battles, when Ares and his mercenary company would sit around licking their wounds. Despite Javarro’s betrayal, Ares still looks back with some measure of fondness and hardly any rancour on those times. It was a certain kind of contentment, to sit in camaraderie with one’s brothers-in-arms. 

Stirrings of that same contentment are within him now, because he’s not exactly alone today; Seliph, smiling, had offered his help, and Ares was loath to refuse it. Thankfully, Seliph, dutiful as ever, had learned quickly—he’s hardly the encumbrance Ares feared he might be, and though their conversation remains yet stilted, they have grown more comfortable with one another.

They the both of them have stripped down to only their breeches—their shirts are bound to get wet in any case, so why not wash them with the rest?—but have nevertheless worked up a sweat under the summer sun. At least the heat means there’s no need to build a fire to dry the clothes.

Beside him, Seliph finishes working the dirt out of Grima’s dark cloak, and transfers it to the wooden tub they’ve been using to ferry dirty clothes to the river and washed clothes to the lines strung between trees. He sits back on his heels and wipes his brow, and says, “I hardly expected this to be so demanding!”

Ares glances at him—the Scion of Light, with his hair tied up and the beginnings of a sunburn on the back of his neck and on his snowy shoulders—and raises an eyebrow. “Did you believe a servant’s job was easy?”

“Well, no, not particularly…” Seliph pauses, and then says, musingly: “Though I must’ve, mustn’t I? It never occurred to me. I suppose you must think less of me now, for that.”

Ares turns to his last piece of clothing—Kiran’s long white cloak, which smells inexplicably more like an ancient chapel, dim, its old flagstones permeated by the sharp smell of incense, rather than of sweat or blood—and sets about washing it as he answers. “No. We had very different childhoods, you and I. I had to do many a servant’s task myself during my time with that group of mercenaries, whilst you had the remnants of Lord Sigurd’s army attending you since you were a babe. It’s natural that we would think differently. At least now you might correct your...failure of imagination.”

“Blunt as ever, Ares,” Seliph says, though without enmity. He stands, and waits for Ares to finish washing Kiran’s cloak; after Ares folds it and places it in the bucket, Seliph offers him his hand. “And...I’m sorry.”

Ares accepts the hand. “Do you think me so sensitive that I should take offence at being called ‘blunt’?”

Seliph laughs softly. “No, no.” He presses Ares’ hand gently, and then slides his free. “It was an apology for your having to grow up with naught but stories of your father to keep you company—that my father’s men left you to raise yourself, even though as son of Nordion and Lionheart you would have been as much of a flag to rally to as I. For that, I’m sorry.”

A pause. Ares’ hand feels cold, now that Seliph’s is not in it. But more importantly:

“Don’t patronise me, Seliph.”

Seliph’s face falls, and Ares feels the slightest twinge of guilt. But Ares meant every word. 

He gets down on his haunches, hoists up the tub of wet clothes, and sets off towards the lines where the rest of the Order’s clothing hang. Seliph trails after him, and stubbornly well-intentioned as the other man is, he can’t let this go.

So when they are at the lines, taking down their shirts and pulling them on—they washed their clothes first, so they’d have time to dry—Seliph tells him: “I meant it, you know.”

“I don’t see how you could have,” Ares says, as he does up his shirt fastenings with practised efficiency. “You knew nothing of my existence until we met in battle. You are not at fault, and you know it. So don’t give me meaningless apologies.”

“Apologies aren’t always a petition for forgiveness of some inflicted wrong, imagined or otherwise,” Seliph says meaningfully. “They can, Ares, also be expressions of sympathy.”

Ares arranges Kiran’s robe on the line with a flick of his arm. “Have I ever ventured one single complaint about my upbringing? I’d wager no—it gave me an independence few of Jugdral’s child lords enjoy. I am stronger for it. Reserve your sympathy for someone who merits it.”

“You’re”—here, Seliph hews dangerously close to petulance—“so _contrary_. Accept, at least, the good intentions with which the apology was made. You deserved more than one sword and a world of troubles.”

The words are so heartfelt that Ares’ throat constricts, drawn tight by an upswell of emotion. But still—the intimation that he is _pitiable_ pricks at his pride.

Whilst he considers what to say next, Ares moves down the line, handing off what’s dry to Seliph for folding and replacing it with a wet cloak, tunic, pair of trousers. He comes up short, though, when he reaches a vermillion coat—one exquisitely tailored, with elegant designs picked out on its cuffs and high collar in gold. Lionheart’s coat.

He must have stood there, still and silent, for so long, that Seliph feels obliged to speak up. “Ares?”

“Forgive my rudeness earlier,” Ares says abruptly. Again, he’s finding it damnably hard to speak. “I suppose your sympathy is...somewhat deserved. There is—something I would have very much liked to have during my childhood.”

His father dead (executed by the very man to whom he’d sworn fealty, in fact), his mother gone...if only he’d had, like Seliph, the testimony of those who knew and loved his father. But all that haunted him were ghosts of the past, resurrected by rumour and hearsay. Perhaps that’s what Seliph was apologising for, all along, and Ares hadn’t been able to see it.

Seliph’s hand grips his shoulder. “At least they’re here now,” he says, meaning Sigurd and Eldigan both. “Late though it may be, you can…”

“Yes,” Ares says. He runs the pad of his thumb over the rich red fabric of one of the coat’s sleeves. “I know.”

Seized by irrational impulse, he places the wet clothes on the ground and sweeps the coat from the line. The coat does not fit him as well as it does his father—the sleeves stretch to his knuckles, and the coat sits awkwardly on his narrower shoulders. The world contracts to the coat, and him, like an breath indrawn and held.

Seliph says nothing to ridicule what Ares has done. He understands, of that Ares has no doubt. He, too, had his father unjustly taken from him at a young age. He, too, aspires to match his father in word and deed. So instead, all Seliph says is, “It suits you.”

Ares looks at his hands, swamped by the coat’s cuffs, and fragments of memories drift across the surface of his mind, like sunlight refracting off a tranquil pond. The press of his toddler’s cheek against the coat’s red breast. Strong hands showing him how to hold a horse’s reins. The first time his fat child’s fingers touched Mystletainn’s hilt. His father’s voice, husky yet smooth, like the rich amber liquor Ares and his mercenary companions had enjoyed, once upon a time, as remuneration for their services. 

He swallows down a childish desire to cry. And suddenly, without warning, the unbearable weight of shame crashes down onto him; face burning, he shuffles off the coat and hands it to Seliph. Clothes do not make the man. What had he been thinking? And in front of Seliph, of all people. 

“Oh, Ares,” Seliph says, softer now. He tucks the coat under one arm, and extends, like he had before at the river, a hand for Ares to take. 

The Scion of Light, open-hearted to a fault. Ares tells him that, word for word, even as he takes Seliph’s hand once more. 

“Am I?” Seliph chuckles lightly, and clasps Ares’ arm with his other hand—a bracing gesture. “Then that I’ll gladly be, if it means I can help those dear to me bear their burdens.”

Those words worm their way through cracks in the armour Ares hasn’t quite yet learned how to take off, and strike true. It makes him grip Seliph’s hand more tightly, makes him painfully aware of the beginnings of a flush on his cheeks.

“Shoulder too much and you will see yourself broken."

“Perhaps. But I have you. And,” Seliph continues, unaware—Ares hopes—of the effect his words are having, “all the others.”

“Indeed,” Ares says, voice treacle-thick.

Seliph at last pulls away, and gives Ares a rueful smile. “I’m sorry. I’ve wasted a lot of our time, haven’t I? Come, we ought to finish hanging up the rest of the clothes to dry.”

And this time it is Seliph that leads the way, and Ares who follows.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> I wrote this originally for a clothes-swap meme prompt (can you tell when it sort-of kind-of happened?) on r/fireemblemheroes.


End file.
